Monday, April 27, 1998 Last modified at 1:56 a.m. on Monday, April 27, 1998

Armed Taliban fighters emerge from their base in the front-line area, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Kabul, Afghanistan Sunday, April 26, 1998. The Afghanistan's usually turbulent battlefields were quiet Sunday as peace talks between the Taliban religious army and its northern-based opposition were held in Islamabad. AP PhotoOutsiders urge peace in war-torn Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - With the effects of 20 years of war in Afghanistan spilling beyond its borders - from the young nations of Central Asia to the United States - the pressure is on for Afghan warriors to make peace.

Afghanistan is the source of many of the world's illegal drugs and a training ground for Islamic militants linked to terrorist attacks worldwide. Rich oil companies want to move gas through the war-ravaged country.

So the United States sent its U.N. ambassador, Bill Richardson, to Afghanistan earlier this month, and he persuaded the Taliban religious army and its northern-based opponents to agree to their first face-to-face talks. They began Sunday in neighboring Pakistan.

The heat is on for results.

Insurgents in the new former Soviet Central Asian countries are headquartered in Afghanistan, and their governments fear the Taliban wants to export its brand of Islamic rule beyond its borders.

Taliban leaders have barred girls from school and women from the workplace and forced men to grow beards and pray since capturing the capital, Kabul, in 1996.

Uzbekistan's border with Afghanistan is patrolled by elite troops guarding against an invasion by the Taliban, which rules 85 percent of Afghanistan. Russia has 25,000 soldiers deployed in Tajikistan along its border with Afghanistan to stop the flow of arms and rebels.

Then there are the drugs: The United Nations says Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material used to make heroin.

Afghan heroin and hashish are sold on the streets of Europe and the United States, smuggled out through Pakistan and increasingly through Central Asian neighbors.

The unstable situation also has hurt U.S. interests, which have been targeted by terrorist attacks linked to veterans who sided with Soviet troops against rebels bankrolled by the United States in the 1980s Afghan war.

Ramzi Yusuf, convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York and planning attacks on Americans worldwide, was a veteran of the Afghan war.

The Taliban also is host to Osama Bin Laden, a billionaire Saudi financier of Islamic militants worldwide. Washington blames Bin Laden for a 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based Unocal Corp. wants to move billions of dollars worth of gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to markets in Pakistan and India. But Unocal says it can't begin construction on a pipeline until there is peace in Afghanistan.

Afghans themselves have said that they want peace, but Sunday's talks were the first attempt at negotiations between the Taliban and the opposition. Still, few are optimistic that they will bring a lasting peace. Since 1992 various warring factions have signed and broken four different peace pacts, and there have been few signs that the warring factions or Afghanistan's neighbors are ready to do what it takes to end the fighting.

Nor is it clear whether the United Nations or other countries would be willing to contribute the monitors or peacekeepers it would take to enforce an agreement.

Before Sunday's talks, both sides were engaging in some of the fiercest fighting in months, despite a cease-fire brokered by Richardson.

It is widely believed that arms on both sides are coming from foreign allies. Pakistan is considered a major backer of the Taliban militia and Iran is seen as supporting the opposition alliance.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked Afghanistan's neighbors to end the flow of arms, though Pakistan and Iran deny giving military assistance.